The Gay, Gilded Scene
Mrs. Day, being told that her daughters proposed to go unchaperoned to the Assembly Rooms that night, declared that for them to do so was unheard-of and not to be sanctioned. But, under the strain of adversity the poor woman's will, never a strong one, had weakened. She was painfully conscious of her own helplessness in the grip of circumstances, and was always troubled with doubts as to the wisdom of her own judgment. By the time her day's work was over she was too tired to stand up against any power she came into collision with. In all that concerned Bessie she was absolutely feeble. Bessie was victor always, not by reason of superior strength but through fractiousness, through stubbornness, through a hysterical determination to talk the opposing voices down, through her habit of crying like a baby when contradicted, and flinging things about.
So, on this particular occasion, the elder daughter avowing in a high, excited voice that not many pleasures came in her way, and that when one did come she meant to take it, let her mother be pleased or let her be teased, the objections were speedily silenced.
Leaving the shop for once in the care of Mr. Pretty, Mrs. Day went upstairs for the pleasure of seeing her girls once more in gala attire.
"I have taken the liberty of ordering a fly for the young ladies," Mr.Gibbon said as he and the mother sat awaiting the appearance of the pair.
"Oh, Mr. Gibbon, if you would go with them, and see them safe to theAssembly Rooms I should be so much obliged."
Mr. Gibbon, with great solemnity of mien, thoroughly realising the responsibility of the office, undertook to do so. He, for his part, was going to take his chance of hearing the great singer with the expenditure of a shilling only. He would be in the Promenade, but his eyes should be on the Miss Days, and if protection were required by them he would be at hand.
Mrs. Day was by no means sure in her anxious heart that her daughters might not need the strong arm of the male to defend them. She thought as she surveyed them while they awaited the arrival of the fly that no mother had ever possessed such treasures to guard. Bessie was always especially comely in evening dress. Her plump, clearly pale cheeks were now pink with excitement. Her white skin against the black ribbon round her throat and threaded through the lace over her ample young bosom was dazzlingly fair.
"Mama, I'm afraid my frock is dreadfully short; even now that Emily has let down the hem," Deleah said, looking anxiously toward her extremities. "It showsallmy feet!"
It showed the ankles too, truth to say; but what did thatmatterwhen the feet were so small and pretty, and the ankles so elegantly slim?
The wonder to the mother was to see how, since that white silk dress had been worn before, the girl's beauty had grown to perfection.
"Do you think it looks ridiculous, mama?" referring anxiously to the scantiness of the skirt and the unblushing exposure of the feet.
"Not at all ridiculous, my dear." What did any imperfection of raiment matter with a face and head like Deleah's; as exquisitely moulded, as delicately poised on her slender throat as a flower on its stalk? "There's a tiny bit of hair awry," the mother said, caught the girl's little chin in her hand and passed her fingers over the shadowy black hair for the mere pleasure of caressing it.
When Mr. Gibbon came in presently it was seen he had changed into dress-clothes, in which attire he had never before appeared.
"But, Mr. Gibbon, you need not have taken the trouble to dress for the shilling places!" Mrs. Day told him.
"I am to have the honour of escorting the two young ladies," he said.
He was red in the face, and appeared bashful and ill at ease in the costume which they saw was a new one.
"To think of his a-gettin' hisself up like that!" Emily said with an amused scorn of the poor man as the cab containing the three drove off. "There's no doubt what he've set his mind on, 'm. But Miss Bessie ain't for such as him. She'll look higher."
When Mr. Reginald Forcus came into the Assembly Rooms with his brother and the sister who since the death of Lady Forcus kept house at Cashelthorpe, and made his way to seats not very far removed from those the sisters occupied, Bessie impulsively seized a bit of Deleah's bare arm in her finger and thumb. She pinched it unconsciously but with such painful emphasis that in the morning Deleah discovered the place to be black and blue.
"There he is! Quite close to us!Nowperhaps you will believe! I always knew it was he who sent the tickets, and sent all the flowers and things! and he sent them for me—only you always took them to yourself, Deda."
She was very smiling, very happy and excited and flushed, through the concert. She looked so pretty, so like the Bessie of the "party" days of old, that Deleah thought not only Reginald Forcus but every man who saw her must admire her pretty sister.
When the "half" arrived, and the ten minutes in which the audience is permitted to stretch its legs and crane its neck, and acknowledge the presence of its acquaintance, behold the younger Forcus eagerly recognising the sisters, and bowing in response to Miss Bessie's delighted smiles and nods.
"Oh, what a pretty girl!" a woman's voice said. There had come a sudden lull in the buzz of talk, and the exclamation reached the ears of many more than his for whom it was intended.
Deleah felt sure it was Bessie who was being admired. She looked quickly at the speaker. It was that middle-aged sister with the pleasant, kind face who had come to take the place of Sir Francis Forcus's dead wife. It was to Sir Francis she had spoken, but she might have been proclaiming the fact of her discovery of a pretty girl, for the general benefit; so complete had been the temporary calm into which her speech had broken. Heads were turned, and several pairs of eyes were fixed upon Deleah.
By a good many present the sisters were recognised, and here and there a smile was turned on them, and here and there a cool, discreet little bow was made. And more often the people who knew them, having involuntarily looked, looked away again; for them the girls' presence there, in a fashionable company and the most expensive seats, was an offence.
"People we were asked a little time ago to keep from starving!" they said to themselves. "If Mrs. Day's daughters can afford this sort of thing, we might as well have kept our guineas in our pockets."
When the audience resumed their seats Bessie kept her eyes pretty constantly directed upon the smooth fair head of Reggie Forcus. Perhaps he was conscious of her gaze and found it a compelling one, for again and again he turned round to look at the sisters, and always Bessie's eyes caught and held his.
Except to the accompaniment of the singing of her own heart the poor girl was unconscious of the music. If it was to the evening's nightingale she listened or to the twittering of the inferior songstresses of the grove who lifted up their voices when the queen was silent she could hardly have said; the melody her heart was chanting triumphantly drowned every note of theirs.
"It has been heavenly," she said, when it was all over, and they stood up for the singing of "God Save the Queen." "In all my life, Deleah, I have never enjoyed a concert so much before."
While she said it she was lingering in her place, stopping the gangway for people anxious to make their way out, pretending to arrange her own cloak and her sister's, in the endeavour to time their exit to that of the Forcus family. She did manage it too; and in the crush as they all approached the door Bessie's happy shoulder was rubbing against the shoulder of the attractive Reggie.
"It's been first-rate, hasn't it?" he said, as if the two years in which he had had no speech with the girl were as nothing, and they had parted yesterday. "Wasn'tShefine! Glad I came. I wouldn't have missed her for anything."
"Heavenly!" Bessie acquiesced, then quickly introduced the personal note. "I wonder you knew me! I thought I was quite forgotten, and was surprised when you bowed."
"Ages since we met, isn't it? I did think about coming to call, but I suppose Mrs. Day is busy?"
"I'm not busy. And I'm always at home. Do come."
"Rather! Shall I call your carriage?"
"Will you?"
So the words "Miss Days' carriage" were passed from mouth to mouth; men yelled it in the street, the officials in the porch of the Hall bawled it to one another, a man in the crowd nearer the door turned his head and shouted "Miss Days' carriage" into the concert room. The air was reverberating with the cry, it seemed to poor Deleah. How could Bessie have made them conspicuous in that way!
Sir Francis Forcus had been looking with some curiosity at the girl to whom his brother was speaking, wedged into the crowd just in front of him; the younger girl at her sister's back was by his side. He glanced at her now, and saw it was she to whose loveliness his sister had called public attention. The Days, of course! He remembered when he heard the name called; remembered all about them.
"Good-evening. How do you do?" he said, looking down upon Deleah.
And Deleah, recalling the last occasion on which she had heard his voice, lifted a pale and speechless face to him, for all her answer.
Some big and important Person at the back, impatient of the delay, here attempted to battle her way through the crowd congested by the too narrow doors. Sir Francis turned and looked at her reprovingly.
"It's no good, Lady Elizabeth. You'll have to wait like the rest of us.It's only a matter of a few minutes."
"Oh, do hurry up in front there!" Lady Elizabeth called back to him, laughing, but imperious. The pressure she and her party were making still continued, with the result that Deleah was driven roughly forward.
"Gently! Gently!" Sir Francis called again, and Deleah felt that his hands were on her shoulders and he was shielding her with his arms as much as possible from the crushing of the crowd.
A minute, and they were through the doorway into the spacious porch, where individual movement was possible, and the fresh night air blew, and Deleah could see the light from the big lamp over the archway flaring on the top of her shabby old fly, while behind it was a long line of handsome carriages whose drivers vituperated the driver of the cab, in his broken hat. At the window was Bessie's face. Bessie's excited voice was heard shrilly calling on Deleah's name.
"Deda! Deda! Whereon earthhave you got to?"
"Miss Days' carriage stops the way"—the cry which made one Miss Day long to hide her minished head in the earth—woke the echoes again.
Deleah half turned her head on its long neck, whispered a shy "thank you" to the tall gentleman at her back; and darted away.
"Oh here you are, Deleah! Come along," Reggie Forcus cried, appearing before her. "We thought we'd lost you. Take my arm."
But before Deleah could comply another arm was proffered, and proffered in a manner so brusque and so determined that the young Forcus fell back involuntarily.
"Thank you. Miss Deleah is in my charge," a voice said; and Deleah felt herself dragged through the crowded porch, and over the pavement to the cab-door, on the arm of Mr. Charles Gibbon.
"You'll excuse me," he said, looking in upon the sisters through the cab window when the door was shut. "I hope you young ladies did not think I intruded. But your mother had asked me to keep an eye on you."
"And pray why didn't you come with Reggie?" Bessie demanded indignantly as the fly at last moved on.
Deleah laughed hysterically. "I was torn away from him," she said. "He all but knocked Reggie down, and seized upon me." She indicated the form of Mr. Gibbon, dimly seen, seated sentinel on the box beside the broken-hatted driver.
"Impertinence!" Bessie said. "We have to be civil to him at home, but when we are among other people I think he might leave us to our friends."
"Reggie Forcus hasn't been much of a friend."
"He is going to be for the future. He asked leave to call. It is a little awkward as you are always at the school, and mama is always downstairs"—(Bessie had never yet brought herself to say "Mother is in the shop") "I would have asked him to come in the evenings, buthe" (again a nod towards the figure of the guardian-angel on the box-seat) "is always there."
"Well, why not?"
"Can't you understand that Reggie might not care to meet a young man out of a draper's shop?"
"But he comes to call on people in a gro—"
"That's different," Bessie quickly announced. "We weren't always there, remember."
"Wednesday afternoons I am at home after three. Saturdays I am at home all day."
"I know," Bessie said, but did not promise to avail herself of the protection offered by her sister's presence on those occasions.
A Tea-Party In Bridge Street
His time being so fully occupied in his own business during the week, and those hours he had been wont to pass with his friend William Day being still unfilled, Mr. George Boult had fallen into the evil habit of coming to hold a business consultation with the widow on the Sunday afternoons. The Day family complained bitterly of this custom. The poor grocer-woman's one blessed day was no longer hers, to be passed from morn to eve in the midst of her children, in rest and peace and forgetfulness of business worries.
She was too tired for church, she always pleaded; but it was not fatigue alone which kept her from public worship. She was accustomed to her place behind the counter now, and in the work-days of the week was too busy for regret, too anxious to sell her goods to feel any shame in the occupation. But on that day when the rest of the world of women went forth with husbands and children to take their places, dressed in their best, in family pews, she felt that she lacked the courage to show her face. She who had queened it with the best of them; she who was the widow of a man who had killed himself to escape from prison! She for whom "sympathisers" and "well-wishers" had collected their sixpenny-pieces that she and hers might be saved from starving.
So she sent the girls to church with Franky, on the Sunday morning, while she, prayer-book in hand, would sit in Deleah's favourite window-seat, beneath the canary's cage, to watch the smart and prosperous Sabbath people airing their newest clothes on the opposite pavement of the street.
Presently Emily, her preparations for dinner made, would come to stand beside her mistress's chair, to turn a critical eye upon the passers-by beneath. Emily knew the names of most of the people of any consideration who passed; knew, and could at length relate the history of themselves and their domestic economies.
"There's Mrs. Hamley, m'm. I haven't never seen her in that black lace shawl before."
"Perhaps she's laid it by from last summer," Mrs. Day would suggest.
"Not she!" Here Emily would lean over the back of her mistress's chair and crane her neck to get a better view of the raiment in question. "Bran' new, I'll lay a guinea! And her still fifteen pound in your debt!"
"Here come the Briggses! Look out, m'm!" presently she would cry. "Well, and ain't they figged out! The whole four of the girls—and every one of 'em in a new bonnet! And them buyin' a pound-and-a-half of butter a week for the whole fam'ly! Tha's what I always say, m'm; the Briggses is a fam'ly that save out of their insides to put it on their bids. Now, here come the best-lookin' young ladies and young gentleman we have set eyes on yet." And then Mrs. Day's own daughters, with Franky clinging to Deleah's arm, would be seen to approach.
"We think so, don't we, Emily? It's because they're our own, you know," the mistress would say, with her deprecating smile. "It's because they're ours, that they seem to look so nice."
But in her heart she heartily agreed with Emily that hers was indeed a charming family.
In the evening Bessie would go off to church again, escorted by Emily, but Deleah would stay with her mother. They would sit together in peaceful, delicious idleness over the winter fire, or, it being summer, they would go forth, escaping by backways and narrow lanes of the old town from the crowded pavements to the quiet roads with their formal rows of trees, their flower-packed gardens and trim hedges. Slowly they would pace along, enjoying the sweeter air of the suburbs, or, gardenless themselves, would stand to peep through garden-gates at the well-ordered array of geranium, calceolaria, verbena; sniffing the fragrance from the serried rows of stocks, the patches of mignonette, or the blossoming lime-trees overhead.
When on that scented Sabbath peacefulness the warm dark would begin to descend, it sometimes happened that the boarder, Charles Gibbon, who also loved the scent of flower and of shrub, and enjoyed the soft air of evening upon his cheek, would meet or overtake Mrs. Day and her daughter as they sauntered homewards; and in a very friendly and pleasant way the three would finish their walk together.
But about the Sunday afternoons there was a less agreeable tale to tell. The young ladies retired with their books to their bedrooms, on those occasions; Franky took refuge with Emily in the kitchen, a store of oranges and nuts having been laid in by that faithful retainer for his entertainment there. The Manchester man saw more than enough of his employer on week-days, and would have preferred to pass a Sabbath afternoon in the cellar with the coals, to spending that portion of his precious holiday with his employer. Poor Mrs. Day was compelled therefore to receive her taskmaster and benefactor alone.
Then had her books to be produced, her order-sheet criticised; then was comparison made between this week's takings and those of the corresponding week last year. If, as too often happened, alas! the sales had been less, the poor apologetic tradeswoman had to suffer for it.
"You are losing custom. You must not lose it," the tradesman would bluster. Or "Your expenses are too much. You are eaten up with expenses," he would insist. "You don't see how you can reduce them? Do with less help, my good lady. What do people do who can't afford help? Go without it, and do the work themselves. It's what you must do. It is indeed, I do assure you. Cut down your expenses. Cut them down! Cut them down!"
"It is easier to say that than to do it," poor Mrs. Day would demur. "We have nothing superfluous."
"You will be surprised how much you can do without if you really make the effort. Get rid of your assistant in the shop. Get rid of your servant. A servant is a very pleasant possession, but if we can't afford to keep one, we can't. What is Miss Bessie doing all day long?"
"Bessie is useful in the house. Bessie is not strong," Bessie's mother would plead; and George Boult would snort the suggestion to scorn.
"A little extra work would be the best physic for Miss Bessie." She had put on a good stone of flesh since he had seen her last, he would declare. Work never killed half the women that idleness killed.
On a Sunday afternoon soon after that concert to which the girls had been escorted by the lodger, George Boult, his business exhortation finished, sprang on the poor mother the news that her son at the branch shop at Ingleby was not giving satisfaction.
A complaint of incivility to a customer had come to the ear of the local manager, who had reported to the Head at Brockenham, delivering himself of the opinion at the same time that the young man played billiards at the Rose and Crown more than was consistent with his means, or the devotion he should have shown to his employer's interests.
Lydia Day listened, her dark, handsome face of a lead white, while the man seated at the table opposite to her condemned her son utterly as one who was flinging away a fine chance. He, George Boult, had been thrown, at Bernard's age, on his own resources. Never that he could recall had a helping hand been held to him. (Men of the stamp of George Boult never recognise the helping hand.) Work had been his pleasure. Had he played billiards? Had he shown temper before a customer? No! Or thought of his own pleasure before his employer's advantage? Never!
Very eloquent he was on the strenuous period of his own youth, recounting the virtues he had displayed and the vices he had shunned, holding up his shining example before the dimmed eyes of the poor mother, listening with sick politeness, her heart so heavy in her breast. The excuses she made for her Bernard to herself she dared not put forward. The fact that he was his father's son; the contrast between the life he had known and that he was called on to live; his youth; his exile from home and home influences; his empty pockets; his tastes which had been formed when money seemed plentiful.
"I implore you to be patient with the boy," was about all she thought it wise to say; that and the promise she made to write at once to Bernard to beg of him to consider his circumstances and Mr. Boult's goodness, and to change what was amiss.
Bernard, her darling, handsome son! While she said it she saw him in a thousand pictures stored in her mother's heart. All that was desirable he had seemed to her; she had never thought of wishing him to change!
"Let him know he is on his trial," George Boult said.
"He is being carefully watched and reported on. Do not tell him this, but tell him the impression he has made on Adams" (Adams was the manager at Ingleby) "is not a satisfactory one; and Adams is a man whose opinions I hold very high. Tell him he is having the chance of his life; warn him not to abuse it."
He was still trampling the poor woman's heart beneath the prancings of his own eloquence, when the ringing of the street-door bell created a diversion.
Downstairs went Miss Bessie, her fair hair ruffled, her cheek flushed from its pressure upon her pillow, to take in, as she imagined, in the absence of Emily, the afternoon's milk.
It was not the anticipated milk, however, that Bessie found upon the doorstep, but no less a delightful surprise than the exquisite person of Mr. Reginald Forcus.
"Ah, how do, Bessie? I thought I'd give you a look. I hope I am notde trop?" he asked. He pronounced the last words as they are spelt, not because he did not know better, but because he liked to be amusing, and the mispronunciation of words was the kind of fun he appreciated.
With effusion, Bessie bade him enter; but in her mind were distracting thoughts of the condition of her chignon, and the present occupancy of the only sitting-room.
"There's some one upstairs with mama," she told him, anxiously smiling upon him, her grey-green eyes glinting with pleasure. "The Mr. Boult, you know, who helps her with her books and things when she'll let him. You won't mind?"
"Happy, I'm sure. You're all alone, week-days," he said as he mounted the stairs behind her—stairs very dark and very steep, starting from the almost unmitigated blackness of the hall upon which the front door opened. "I thought if I looked in on the Sunday afternoons I should find the others as well, perhaps."
"You'll find mama," Bessie said, wondering a little at his concern for the proprieties. "Here is Reggie, mama," she said. And Mrs. Day, her heart full of her own unhappy boy, went forward with a weary step, and smilelessly held out a welcoming hand.
"You are very kind to come, Reggie," she said. "This is our good friend,Mr. George Boult; Mr. Reginald Forcus."
"I take it young Mr. Forcus and I don't need any introduction," the draper said.
The Forcus family did not deal at his shop; the deference therefore which the draper never failed to pay his customers was not needed here. He shook poor Reggie's hand mercilessly, and inquired after Sir Francis. Mr. George Boult had recently been made a magistrate; Sir Francis and he sat on the same bench.
"You are extremely well known to me by sight," he went on, still exercising the visitor's hand. "I should say there are few people in Brockenham better known to me by sight."
"I go past your place pretty often," Reggie admitted.
"You'd see me four or five times a day if you were looking out."
"Oh, I'm not always behind my own shop window," Mr. Boult said, not too well pleased. When he was not talking to a customer why should he be reminded of the shop? Since he had been able to write J.P. after his name, he had more than once been secretly desirous of temporarily forgetting the successful drapery establishment.
He was always disposed to lose himself in wonder at his own marvellous achievements. Time was when the members of the great brewery firm were as far above his head as the stars of heaven above the pebbles of the street. Yet here he was now, to all intents and purposes on a par with them. Where was the difference? A successful business man, he was—what more were they? Still, since Sir Francis had taken to addressing him as "Boult" without any prefix to the name, when they met in the magisterial room, the desire to ingratiate himself with any member of the Forcus family was very warm within him.
"Whenever I do see you, I am struck with the handsomeness of the animal you ride, Mr. Forcus," he was saying presently. "I think this young gentleman rides the handsomest animal in the town, Miss Bessie. I'm a great admirer of handsome animals, Mr. Forcus."
"Is that so? Really?" said Reggie, supremely indifferent. He had no objection whatever to make the acquaintance of old Boult, the linen-draper—although, of course, that difference between a successful draper and a successful brewer which Mr. Boult was incapable of discerning was quite clear to him—but he was not in the least interested in him; and what should the old fellow know about a horse?
"Isn't Deleah at home to-day? I thought I should have caught Deleah. That is why I dropped in on the Sunday."
Deleah was out walking with Franky, Mrs. Day told him, thankful that Bessie, who had slipped away with a view to the adjustment of the disarranged chignon, was not present to hear that explanation.
"I meet Deleah sometimes as she comes home from school," the young man artlessly continued. "I dare say she's told you I sometimes meet her?"
No, Mrs. Day did not remember hearing Deleah mention that interesting fact.
"No harm in that, I suppose, Mrs. Day? You don't object, if Deleah doesn't?"
"Harm?" repeated Mrs. Day, only half conscious of what was said, thinking of Bernard going wretchedly about his hated work with a "sharp watch" set on his doings.
"I mean I wouldn't do anything to annoy you or Deleah—"
It was a relief that at that moment Bessie descended, her hair in order, a look of pleasant excitement on her plump face. No one need half-heartedly try to carry on a conversation with Reggie when once Bessie was present to monopolise him.
And then Deleah and Franky, their cheeks rosy from exercise, appeared.Franky went to his mother and climbed on her lap, and Deleah sat close toher side, a little too apparently, perhaps, leaving the young man andBessie to carry on their sparkling conversation uninterrupted.
When Emily came in, to lay the tea-table, the two men got up to go. "Mama, Reggie will stay if you ask him," Bessie said. How triumphant she felt, how her eyes sparkled when Reggie said at once he should like to—rather!
"And Mr. Boult will stay to tea too, mama," Deleah said quickly. She did not need the heavy silence which fell to tell she had offended; not Bessie's warning scowl, nor her mother's piteous look of appeal. As no one seconded the invitation, "Do stay," Deleah said. And he gracefully yielded.
"Since you are so polite, I don't mind if I do," he said. He really felt honoured by the invitation, the first he had ever received in that house. The long low-ceilinged sitting-room above the grocer's shop was tenanted by ladies of whom in days gone by he had felt a certain awe. Down in the world as they were now, he never forgot that ancient attitude of theirs. Even when he bullied Mrs. Day, and advised her daughters to do the work of servants, he had not forgotten. Perhaps at such times he remembered it more than ever.
His wife, dead for the last seven years, had been of a different make from these women. Finding nothing in himself to debar him from being an ornament in any society, he saw very well that the late Mrs. George Boult had been, as he put it, "of another kidney." He had been fairly content with her while he had her; she had been a good housekeeper; and had not crossed him in his wish to save money; but looking back upon the poor woman, he saw plainly that she had not the appearance of these ladies, nor had she spoken like them, nor possessed the ways of them. She had been all very well for his then condition, but times had changed for him; and here he was, well pleased to be sitting at the board of people who would not at one time have received the late Mrs. Boult under their roof, on terms of equality with Sir Francis Forcus's brother!
He was a rich man himself, and going, he would see to it, to be richer, but the income of the Forcuses he knew was perhaps seven times as much as his own; and he was one of that large body of good sort of people who love to be in the society of men richer than themselves.
"We so much enjoyed the concert, Mr. Boult," Deleah said to him.
"The concert?" Mr. Boult repeated. He wished to talk to Bessie, having it on his conscience to advise her to do without a servant, and he did not feel called upon to exert himself "to do the polite," as he phrased it, to the younger girl.
"Some kind friend sent us stalls for the concert," explained Deleah, flushing. "It was so kind of the unknown person, and such a delightful treat."
"Stalls? The half-guinea places, do you mean?" There was astonished disapproval in eyes and voice.
"Wasn't it sweet of Someone?" Deleah went on, bent on expressing her gratitude to the shy donor. "It was the same Someone, I suppose, who sent the lilies-of-the-valley, yesterday, and my darling canary; look! It is Someone to whom we can never be grateful enough!"
"Better keep your gratitude for the more substantial benefits you have all received." He was thinking, Mrs. Day knew, of the fifty pounds which had headed the subscription-list. "Lilies were sixpence the bunch in the market yesterday."
"But it isn't the cost," Deleah explained; her face was rose-red with her effort to say that which she had determined should be said to the man they all disliked, but who was showing himself by the thoughtful little attentions to which she alluded, in his true colours. "It isn't the cost alone, it is the kind thought for which we are so grateful."
"Oh, come, Deleah!" Reggie interrupted. "I offered you tickets, you remember, and you weren't a bit grateful for the kind thought. And as for the lilies, I dare say I could send you flowers every morning from the conservatories at home, if you'd care for them."
"I should not in the least care for them from your conservatories. Don't send them, Reggie, or we should have to send them back."
"Why, pray? Speak for yourself, please," Bessie cried. "If you've any flowers going begging I'm not above taking them, Reggie, remember."
"The flowers aren't mine," Reggie reminded her at once. "They grow there—tons of them—and no one to look at them now, but Francis and Ada. Yet, if I want to send a few to a girl there's questions asked, and a sickening fuss made. I order them from the nurseryman rather than have the fag of it."
"Well—?"
"Oh, all right. I'll order some for you, Bessie."
Then, when tea was all but finished, a step was heard upon the stairs, and presently Mr. Gibbon came in. At the sight of the other two men his face fell perceptibly. To him also the Sabbath was a precious time. The hour, especially, which brought the meal over which they need not hurry for any evening work; in the room made sweet with flowers; in the company of the three charming ladies; on the table the extra delicacies Emily always provided for the occasion.
Boult! Forcus! The two men whom, least on earth, he desired to see there.
"Hallo, Gibbon!" his chief said; and the man addressed felt in his bones that the tone was unmistakably that of the employer to the employed. "Been getting forward for to-morrow, I suppose?"
No, Gibbon said, he had not; and he spoke curtly, and kept his heavy head up, and drew his brows together, and was somewhat offensive in manner, in the effort to show he was not subservient. He bowed sulkily to Mr. Reginald Forcus, when Mrs. Day murmured that gentleman's name. The fact that the young man when he came of an age to take the third share which was to be his in the brewery would be rolling in money, was nothing to him, and he wished to show to all present it was not! At the concert he, who was ugly, and short, and poor, and of no account in the world, had had the best of the elegant young man with his fortune and the name which was one to conjure with in Brockenham. He had wrested Deleah from him, and pushed him on one side. He did not propose to smile amiably at him across the tea-table after that.
He was going to Lancashire to buy goods for his department to-morrow—he was absent there for four or five days every three weeks. This was his last evening of Paradise for a while; and the Serpent had entered there!
"You are late," Bessie rebuked him sweetly. "And you must wait for more tea to be made. Where have you been, pray? Give an account of yourself."
He had walked out five miles, he told her, to the garden of a friend who had a small conservatory. He had hoped to be rewarded with some flowers to return with, but had only been accorded the three roses he held in his hand.
"Very sweet of you to bring them for me, all the same," Bessie said, smiling graciously.
Gibbon was, however, shy or sullen this evening, for he seemed by no means anxious to relinquish the flowers; and when he did so he laid them between his plate and Deleah's, who promptly put them into Bessie's extended hand. When pinned in the bosom of her grey frock the flowers had a charming effect, to which she called the attention of all present.
"Aren't they sweet, mama! Mr. Boult, Reggie, aren't they simply sweet! And poor Mr. Gibbon to have walked so many miles for them!"
And so, at cross purposes, with heart-burnings and some bitterness of spirit, they got through their Sunday tea.
"It would have been delightful if you had not invited your old Scrooge," Bessie, who, at any rate, had thoroughly enjoyed herself, flung at her sister.
The Manchester Man
Mrs. Day had retired to write her letter to Bernard in the privacy of her own room, and Bessie, in radiant spirits, had gone off to dress for evening service, where she was to go escorted by Franky and Emily. Deleah was left in charge of the boarder.
It was a point of honour with them all that the young man should have his money's worth while under their roof, and above all, should have his meals in comfort. The cup which Bessie had poured out for him stood cold and untasted by his side. Deleah took it from him. Certainly he should not have the dregs of the tea-pot; she would brew a fresh pot for him.
"I beg you will not trouble, Miss Deleah. It is my fault in being late."
He, who held the creed that a gentleman must never allow a lady to wait on him (unless she was his mother, or he was married to her), must follow Miss Deleah to the kitchen, also on the upper floor, must watch her rinse the tea-pot, must advise with her as to the amount of tea required to make the three large cups he always drank, must himself pour the boiling water, she, with many exhortations from him to be very careful lest she scalded her fingers, holding the tea-pot. There was something delightfully homelike and familiar in this sharing of simple duties.
Deleah, returned to the sitting-room where she sat to fill his cup and to cut him bread-and-butter, was as lovely a vision as any man could desire to see at his board. Pleasantly and gaily she chattered, waiting on him with her dainty hands. He, tongue-tied, answering little, embarrassed and ill at ease in that sweet society.
For a year and a half he had lived in the dingy house above the shop in Bridge Street. He had for eighteen months enjoyed that propinquity, that familiar intercourse, which is all that is necessary to make many an ugly woman beautiful in the eyes of the man in enjoyment of her society. It is small wonder then, if the poor Manchester man exaggerated in his own mind those unusual charms which Deleah incontestably possessed.
A year and a half! And in all that time he could never recall an occasion when he had been left for any length of time alone with Deleah, before. It was Bessie who had constituted herself his especial friend, had seized on him, talked to him, made confidences to him, and satisfied herself it was his wish to talk to her. Deleah, he knew, had looked on him as Bessie's property. He had resented this assumption, but had not known how to dispute it.
Besides being of a loveliness which he had come to think unsurpassed, she was so gentle, so tender-hearted, so pitiful, this young Deleah; so adorably kind. She had learnt in that grief and shame which he knew had befallen her a lesson, taught her he was sure by the pitying angels of God; to think no sorrow too trivial to be despised, to be tender even to the scratched finger, the bruised shins of the poor men and women scrambling painfully along the tough and thorny path of life.
He was a short and broad and ugly man, approaching middle age; of a commonplace cut of features, of poor birth, of mean fortunes, of small account in the scheme of things; but he had an eye for beauty; he had a soul; and his eye was filled with a beauty completely satisfying his conception; and with his soul he worshipped the soul of Deleah.
"I am sorry," he suddenly said, cutting across some little triviality of hers with which she was striving to cover his silence—"sorry you did not have even one of the roses I walked ten miles to get for you."
"I?" she glanced fleetingly at him. "Oh, it does not matter, of course.Bessie has them, and she loves them so. I had far rather Bessie had them."
He gazed upon her, reproachful but silent.
"Bessie so loves flowers," she said, remembering how Bessie had pounced upon the poor roses before they had been offered. It had not been a pretty sight—but Bessie—poor Bessie!—did such things.
"Miss Bessie so loves them to wear in her dress," he corrected.
And at that moment Miss Bessie burst into the room, attired for conquest and for church, the flowers which the boarder had walked so far to procure, pinned, as was the mode of the day, beneath the collar of her jacket. Gibbon glanced grudgingly at them, nestling becomingly enough under Bessie's plump chin.
"Oh, how glum you look!" cried Bessie in the best of spirits.
"Not glum at all," said Mr. Gibbon with something less than his usual politeness of tone.
"Only cross? Ah! I am so afraid of you! I must run away."
She beckoned to Deleah, who followed her to the tiny landing. "The Honourable Charles has got his back up because of Reggie," she whispered, "and Reggie is furious because of the Honourable Charles's flowers. Did you hear how he snapped at me just now?"
"Why should Mr. Gibbon be angry because of Reggie?"
"Oh, my dear innocent babe! Don't you know that men are sometimes jealous?"
"Yes. I know it. And I know another thing: and that is you were doing your best to make them jealous."
Bessie laughed delightedly as at a compliment: "I leave one of them to you. Try to get him into a better frame of mind before I come back," she said, and turned to run downstairs.
Deleah leaned over the railing of the tiny landing, lit by a single gas-jet above her head, to watch her go. She liked to see Bessie good-tempered and in good spirits, and if to believe that every man she knew was in love with her made her so, Deleah was willing to humour her. About the devotion of young Forcus for Bessie she had her doubts, but that of the lodger she took as a matter of course.
He was still seated at the table when she returned to him; the bread-and-butter she had cut for him untouched on his plate, his tea untasted.
"I thought perhaps you were not coming back," he said. He sighed, as if relieved from an anxiety which had been painful. "Miss Deleah, I wish very much to speak to you."
There were a few things in the matter of deportment he had learnt since living over the grocer's shop; one was that a man must not sit while a lady is standing. So he stood up in his place now, and waited till she had taken hers again behind the tea-urn.
"Oh, but, Mr. Gibbon, do eat your tea!"
He pushed his plate away: "I don't want to eat. I want to talk to you."
Glancing at him she saw that his face, ordinarily of a deep-diffused red, was as pale as it is possible for such a face to become. Often when she had felt his eyes upon her and had looked up frankly to meet them, she had noticed how quickly he had averted them, almost as if detected in a crime. Now she found them fixed upon her face.
"There is something I have made up my mind to tell you," he said.
"It won't take long, I hope? Because as Emily is at church I have to clear the tea-things."
She jumped up at once and began to do so. "He is going to tell me about Bessie," she said to herself. She did not particularly desire his confidence, and with a little more clatter and fussiness than was necessary to the task, she put the cups and plates on the tray.
In a preoccupied manner he helped her to do this, took the tray from her, when it was laden, to the kitchen, while she carried the eatables. Coming back, together they folded the tablecloth. A pleasant enough occupation to be shared with a pretty girl; but it was evident, although his trade had made his blunt fingers deft at the handling of material, and he was carefully observant of the practice which must be followed in the art, that he was thinking of other things than maintaining the creases in the tablecloth.
"There!" said Deleah, as an announcement that their light labours were finished. She had put the cloth away in the press, and turned to find the Honourable Charles, as she and Bessie to themselves always called their boarder, standing with his back to the little dresser at which Emily made her pastry, his arms crossed upon his chest.
"Now you can go and sit down in comfort, and smoke the pipe of peace on my special window-seat—I give you permission—and watch the good people going to church."
"That is, if you are coming."
"I think I'll go first and see what has become of mama."
"This will do, for a few minutes, Miss Deleah. We will stop here," he said.
So Deleah, there being no escape, perched herself on the corner of the table where the plates and tea-cups were collected until Emily should return to wash them, and waited for what he had to say.
He found some difficulty in beginning apparently, and frowned upon the matting covering the floor.
"It's about myself," at length he began with an effort painful to see; his hands seemed to be pulling tensely upon his folded arms, the blunt fingers of the broad red hands showed white upon the coat-sleeves, his face was still of the muddy pink which with him stood for pallor.
"I hope you won't think it intruding of me to talk about myself."
"Which in other words means about Bessie," said Deleah to herself, strung up, now that it was inevitable, for the revelation.
"It's about my prospects. Perhaps you think I haven't got any, Miss Deleah. Or any position, to speak of? I have not, I know. Not like your friend, Mr. Forcus. He's got this thousands a year, where at most I can hope for hundreds, I suppose."
Deleah divined the sore feeling in his mind and hastened to bring the balm: "Reggie Forcus might have millions where he will have thousands—and the more he had the less likely would he be to affect any of us. He has been here this afternoon, and if he remembers he may come again. But that is simply the whim of an idle young man who at the moment can think of nothing more amusing to do."
"I thought he seemed to take a good deal of interest. I caught him looking—"
"At Bessie? He likes her, of course, and there was once a great friendship. If—things—hadn't happened, I dare say it might have come to more than friendship. But they did happen, and—" She broke off. Never could she without suffering and difficulty allude to the tragedy which had cost them so dear.
"I assure you, Mr. Gibbon," she began again, and smiled encouragingly upon him, "you are of far more importance to us than Mr. Reginald Forcus is ever likely to be."
"I thank you for telling me that," he said, and his fingers strained tighter upon his coat-sleeves.
Then he lifted his eyes and looked at her as she sat, perched with ease and grace among the tea-cups on the kitchen table. Every movement of hers was made, every posture taken, with ease and grace. It happened, for Deleah's fortune, to be the day of the small woman; the day when she of inches was pronounced a gawk, and she of five feet and a little—slim of waist, of foot, of hand, of ankle—slid with ease and naturalness into a man's heart.
"Thank you for that," said the Manchester man again, with a kind of hoarse fervour in his voice. "You are always kind. I don't think the angels in heaven are kinder than you."
A statement at which Deleah among the tea-cups laughed light-heartedly.
"No. Don't laugh," he said almost fiercely. "It is true! I believe it with all my soul."
He looked from her to the floor at his feet again, frowning upon it, striving for the calmness to proceed with that which he had to say in the order he had taught himself to believe was best for his case.
"I'm getting two hundred a year," he said. "This year, come Christmas, I'm to have a rise to two hundred and fifty. Next year"—he paused, set his lips tightly—"next year I mean to ask for a share in the business."
"Do you?" said Deleah with polite interest. "Do you really think you will get it, Mr. Gibbon?"
"I shall get it, fast enough. I shall get it, for this reason: if Boult doesn't give it me I shall leave him. Boult can't afford to lose me. I don't want to boast, but it's true. He can't afford to lose me, and he knows it. Do you know," and he lifted his head, speaking more naturally and looking at her with pride in his achievement, "in the two years I have been in the concern I havedoubledthe takings in my department?"
"Really? How very clever of you, Mr. Gibbon! Youmustbe pleased!"
He looked at her, and laughed hopelessly. "You don't understand these things, Miss Deleah. You don't realise that what I have done means much."
"Oh, but I do, Mr. Gibbon! I have always thought that you must be a quite wonderful business man; so quiet, so regular, thinking of nothing but your work."
"I do think of other things," he said fervidly. "I want to get on. I want to improve myself, and my position. There's an end I'm working for. If a man sets an end before him, and works for all he's worth to get it, does he get it, Miss Deleah?"
"He gets it. Never doubt it!"
"Well then, see! When I get my share of the business I shall work the whole show up as I have worked my own department. The other establishments in the same line can put their shutters up. It's the biggest drapery business in the town now—Boult is proud enough to ram that fact down your throat—but I shall make it the biggest drapery business in the Eastern Counties."
"How splendid of you, Mr. Gibbon! And supposing Mr. Boult won't give you the share?"
"I am not sure it would not be better. In that case I shall start on my own. Not in a shop. I shall open a warehouse for the sale of my goods, alone."
"Those calicoes, and prints, and 'drabbets,' you go to Manchester to buy?" put in Deleah, anxious to show that she understood.
"Manchester goods. I shall carry with me all the little customers who come to me now to take my advice what they shall buy, and a lot of shopkeepers of a better class, who will deal with a wholesale mean but will not buy their goods of Boult."
"Poor Mr. Boult!"
"He must look after hisself. I heard Miss Bessie say the other day that the wholesale line was genteeler than retail—." He broke off and looked questioningly at Deleah, who had formed no opinion on the subject.
"Bessie knows about these things," she assured him. "Then, you will become a very rich man, Mr. Gibbon. And will go away, and never help us to make mincemeat any more, or to clear the table after Sunday tea. You will drive your carriage with apairof horses—not one miserable screw like Mr. Boult—and you will live in a fine house, and grow roses, and build conservatories; won't you?"
"Yes," he assented solemnly. Then he unfolded his arms and' stretching them sideways gripped with each hand the ledge of the dresser against which he leant. "I shall want you to come with me," he said.
"Me!" said Deleah. The shock of the surprise made her for a moment breathless. She sat and gazed at him with wide eyes for what seemed an age, saying nothing; and he also, for the moment incapable of further speech, gazed back. At last "Bessie?" Deleah got out. "You mean Bessie?"
"Why should I mean Bessie?Bessie!" he said, and flung the thought of her from him with scorn. "Why should I mean Bessie? I mean you—you—you!" he said, and endured her silence with eyes that clung desperately to her face.
"When I leave here, to go into that fine house—with the carriage and—conservatories—will you come too?"
"Oh, no!" Deleah said, whispering, with drooping head.
Then they sat opposite each other on table and dresser and were silent, while the blood sang loudly in Deleah's ears, and beat with such cruel throbbing in the man's temples that he did not know how to endure the agony, and thought that his head must burst.
When Deleah at last lifted her eyes and looked at him the change in his face frightened her, his breath came hard and noisily as if he had been running. Was it possible he could feel like that—this quiet, inoffensive, uninteresting, middle-aged boarder, who had never appeared to feel anything particularly before? About her?
"I am so sorry," she said in genuine distress, horribly grieved at and ashamed of her part in his pain. "I thought it was Bessie."
"You have refused me? You mean it—absolutely? There is no hope for me?"
Deleah shivered. It was the regulation phrase used by the rejected lover in the novel of the day. It had thrilled Deleah a hundred times as she had read it. There was nothing stilted or theatrical in the words as Charles Gibbon said them, but they brought home to her the unwelcome fact that he was in deadly earnest, that he loved her, and she was dealing him a cruel blow. She felt miserable, humiliated, ashamed. It was preposterous, out of all proportion, that he should have had to ask such a question, in such a tone, of little Deleah Day.
"I am so very sorry, Mr. Gibbon," she said again, and he heard in a silence that made her heart ache.
"Shall you go away?" she asked him presently. In books the lover being rejected removed himself for a time in order to recover from the blow. She was relieved to find in the boarder's case this was not considered necessary.
"Why should I go away?" he asked.
"It will be better to go on just the same," she advised eagerly. "Bessie need never know."
"Bessie!" he said again contemptuously; he loosed his grip of the dresser, and swung round, standing with his back to her, that she might not see his face. "You've crushed every hope I had; you've—broken me; and you talk to me of Bessie. What, in the name of heaven or hell, do you suppose I care forBessie; or whether she knows or not?"
Deleah, keeping her place on the table, listened to the altered, choked voice of him with astonishment. Their unfailingly polite—too polite! and retiring boarder! Was it really he, standing with his back to her, speaking of Bessie—Bessie!—in such a tone!
"You see, I never knew! I never guessed," she excused herself helplessly.
"No. I don't suppose you gave me a thought. Morning, noon and night you were everything to me. There was nothing else. I have worked for you, lived for you—"
His back was towards her—the horrible thought that he was crying came to her; his voice was rough and broken.
"If I had only guessed—" she said in hideous distress and embarrassment. She had thought, as all girls do, of one day getting an offer of marriage; that it could ever be such a miserable experience as this she had not imagined. If it had only been a stranger, she thought foolishly; some one outside her life, of whom she had seen little! But Mr. Gibbon—their boarder! The sight of him in their home circle had become as familiar to her as might have been the sight of her brother: she could not reconcile herself to the thought that this man in the horribly unfamiliar guise was he. "If I had only guessed—!"
"And if you had?" he asked, but hopelessly, without turning round.
"I could have told you the sooner. There wouldn't have been such a—waste."
She slipped off the table, and stood beside it in a painful state of indecision. She longed to get away from the sight of him, to escape; but at the same time, being Deleah, she also longed to comfort.
"I shall not even tell mama," she promised. "We shall go on just as usual.And soon—soon we shall forget it has happened."
"Shall we?"
"Oh, yes! It is astonishing how we can put things away, in the back of our minds, and go on as if they weren't there at all. Quite astonishing."
"We oughtn't to make a piece of work about our sorrows if we can get along with them as easily as that!"
"Oh, not our sorrows, of course." She remembered how the sorrow of her father's dreadful end was with her still and would be while she lived. "Our sorrow, of course, Mr. Gibbon, we cannot forget. But a little thing that goes amiss like this—a little disappointment—"
"I see," he said. Then he gave a sound, half choke, half hiccough, that was meant for a laugh; and presently he turned round. "Then, we will go on as before, Miss Deleah. You need not be afraid any one will learn of this—'little disappointment'—from me. I am pretty well used to hiding what I feel. It comes easy when you've once learnt that nobody cares."
"Oh, Mr. Gibbon. Don't please say that. I care."
"No, you don't. You don't care like I want you to. What's the good of anything else? Have we finished clearing away the tea-things, Miss Deleah? Anything more that I can help you with?"
She shook her head, looking at him with eyes which implored him not to be bitter or unhappy. And as she looked, seeing the familiar red face and squat strong figure of him in a new light an idea struck her.
"Mr. Gibbon," she said, "it wasyouwho sent the concert tickets, and all the flowers and fruit, and the canary in its lovely cage. It was you—you!"
"No, no! Mr. Boult, of course, Miss Deleah. You found out who it was, long ago. Kind, generous Mr. Boult!"
"And I took them all, and never thanked you—!" She put out a hand to delay him as he walked past her to the door; but he took no heed, and without another word she let him go.
"What have you done with your roses?" Deleah asked. Bessie tucked in her plump chin and looked down upon the place beneath her jacket collar where they had been pinned. "I must have lost them coming out of church!" she said. "Pray do not let the Honourable Charles hear of it."
The three poor roses! Deleah's roses, the boarder had tramped the ten miles to get for her!
For Bernard
Sir Francis Forcus was standing with his back to the empty fireplace in his private room at the Brewery, a copy of the local daily newspaper in his hand. It was a pleasant room, although the view from the two open windows was only of the tall black wharves and warehouses across the way. You must lean from the window to catch sight of the black river flowing beneath, upon which the Brewery was built; of the great wherries and barges unloading below; to see the canoes and pleasure boats, escaping from the polluted waters, the bricks and mortars of the locality, to the sunlit stream flowing between fair gardens and green pastures of the country, a half-mile farther on.
From a window in one of the black, ill-looking wharves across the way an imprisoned lark was singing, rewarding man for his cruel treatment with the best he had to give, after the manner of the brute creation, whose avenging is not yet. A ray of sunlight straggling in—in more open, more favoured localities, the sun lay broadly over all on that spring morning—touched the face of Sir Francis, which wore a by no means well-pleased expression. In the paper he was reading, wet from the press, was an account of a steeplechase in which his brother's name had largely figured. He had not won the race, nor distinguished himself in any way, except by the number and severity of his falls, and the fact that he had killed his horse; but theBrockenham Starwas, to a large extent, the property of the firm of big brewers, and had therefore made the most of the young man's exploits.
"The boy will break his neck yet," the reader said to himself. He was not largely in his brother's confidence. The death of the horse was news to him; he had not even known there was a steeplechase.
"What good is he doing with all this?" Sir Francis asked of himself, sternly looking off the paper. "He takes no interest in the Brewery. He is a man in years, and has never done a half-hour's work in his life."
Sir Francis's own half-hours of work would not have totalled up to much, but he had business ability, nevertheless. At certain hours of the day he was always to be found, as now, at his post, and what he did not do himself he took care that those he paid should do efficiently.
Above the mantelpiece hung the portrait of the founder of the Brewery, or rather of the man who had worked up the business already founded into a phenomenally successful one. Often as the elder partner looked upon the sensible, kindly, handsome-featured face, he reminded himself how very dear to his father in his old age had been this unbusiness-like, pleasure-loving, steeplechase-riding younger son, who had been but a boy at school when the old man had died. Very frequently it was necessary for him to remind himself of the fact; for between the duty-loving, serious-minded, middle-aged, sorrowing widower and his half-brother was very little in common.
A clerk opening the door announced that a lady had called who was waiting to see Sir Francis.
"A lady? My sister—Miss Forcus?"
"A young lady. She didn't give her name."
"Ask it, please."
Back came the clerk with a slip of paper on which was written a name Sir Francis read to himself, and then aloud, looking questioningly upon the clerk, "Miss Deleah Day. Miss Deleah Day?"
The clerk, having no information to give or suggestion to offer, continued to look respectfully at his employer's boots.
"Show her in, please," Sir Francis said; and in a minute the door was opened and Deleah appeared.
Sir Francis, theBrockenham Stardepending from his left hand, bowed in his solemn fashion to the girl, and going forward turned a chair round from the writing-table, in which be indicated his desire that she should sit. How white and frightened she looked; what a young, little, extraordinary pretty thing! Full well he remembered the last occasion of her presence in his room. What had sent her to him now? What did she want? He recalled how Reggie, whose name, it seemed to him, was always being mentioned in some undesirable connection or other, had got himself mixed up with this girl's objectionable family. Reggie, he wondered? Or was it that the mother's wretched grocery business had failed, as he had always expected it to do, and he was to be asked for another contribution towards setting her going again?
With those thoughts passing through his mind, he went back to his old position by the fireplace, standing up stiff and straight and tall, upon the hearth, to survey his visitor from there.
"You were so kind once," Deleah said, and he heard that she had a difficulty in keeping her voice steady, and saw that her lips shook "—so very kind when I came to you before, that I have come again."
Too apprehensive of what her errand might be to say that he was glad to see her, he bowed his head in sign of courteous attention, and waited.
As she had come on her hateful errand, she had thought of how she would prepare the ground, in some way leading up to the petition she had to make, but speech was too difficult, and she could barely deliver herself of the necessary words: "I have come to ask you to give me fifty pounds," she said.
Sir Francis's eyes opened largely upon her, but he did not speak. To say at once that he would give the poor child—the tool no doubt of her family, sent by them to work upon him because she was so pretty and young and appealing—fifty pounds without further explanation would be simply silly: to say that he would not did not enter his head.
She had waited for an encouraging word; none coming; painfully she laboured on: "I say 'give' because I am not sure I could ever pay you—I earn so very little money. But if I ever can pay you, you may trust me that I shall."
"I am sure you will," the rich man said, and waited for her to go on with her story. But she sat in an embarrassed silence before him, her head drooping, frightened and ashamed.
"We will call it 'lent,' shall we?" presently he said. "You will feel happier so. And there will be no hurry. No hurry, at all."
"Oh thank you! I do thank you so much. I want to tell you—"
"No, no," he said and held up a hand to check the words upon her lips. It was ridiculous to give away money in such a fashion, but he had a feeling that if he knew its destination he should give it with more reluctance.
"But I must tell you, please. I wanted to tell you before, but—" Her eyes avoided his face and wandered distressedly round the room. How well she remembered it! It was here she had come to beg this man—this stranger!—to keep her father out of prison. And now her brother—now Bernard! Was there any girl in all the world so overwhelmed with shame as she! "It is my brother—" she got out. "He—I have brought his letter."
She found her pocket, and brought forth the letter which had come to her by the morning post, ravaging her heart, turning the sunshine black, making the song of the imprisoned lark opposite into a dirge, plunging her back into the woe which had been hers at the time of her father's disgrace. She drew the miserable letter from its envelope and held it to Sir Francis in trembling fingers.
"No," he said, and waved it away. "It is perhaps something that your brother would rather not have known. Something which can remain between you and him. And this—this fifty pounds"—he had gone to his writing-table, pulled a cheque-book from a drawer, was writing within it as he spoke—"this also is between you and me. No one, besides, needs ever to know a word of it."
The chair he had arranged for her to sit in was by the writing-table; he, sitting on the opposite side of it, lifted his eyes to her face without lifting his head: "You wish this made out to your brother or yourself?"
"To my brother."
"Will you tell me his name?"
"Bernard William."
She watched his strong white hand move over the paper, writing so easily the words that were of such moment to her. How the great ruby in the ring he wore on the hand which held the pen seemed to glow and burn in the sunlight. On the little finger of his other hand was a plain small circlet she knew to be from the finger of his dead wife. She noticed in the strong light from the window how the smooth black hair had grown grey about the ears, how lines which had not been there before had graved themselves in the handsome, impassive face. Was he very unhappy too, Deleah wondered, in the midst of her own trouble? Did he still mourn, as they said he had done, so heavily, for the lost wife?
He pushed the cheque across the table to her. "There!" he said.
He had caught her gaze fixed with its sorrowful questioning upon his face, and he put away from him his doubt, his annoyance, and in spite of himself smiled encouragement into her pleading, beautiful, innocently worshipping eyes.